


Corrupted File

by MyLittleHime



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Gen, angst and some comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-24
Updated: 2017-02-24
Packaged: 2018-09-26 15:09:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9908123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MyLittleHime/pseuds/MyLittleHime
Summary: A one shot of Reaper Angst-An old video file has seemingly been corrupted beyond repair, but when something appears on a mission that jogs his memory, Reaper is confronted by something he's tried to bury for years.





	

Corrupted File 

By Mylittlehime

 

.....................

The video is at least a decade old. The sound doesn’t work anymore. It has been copied and transferred so many times, the quality had severely degraded. The technology that had originally recorded it had long been antiquated. It was so grainy, one could hardly make it out. The people looked blurry and frayed at the edges. There was a smattering of blue, something grey moved on the right side of the screen, blue flickered across it. The sound buzzed and hummed, and there was a degraded, but distinct sound of a little girl laughing. Then, the video was over.

.....................

 

It was supposed to be easy.

Break into the museum, steal the relic.

He should have been able to handle it, even if a handful of Recalled Overwatch Agents showed up. Within moments, he’s pulled out his shotguns and they are firing at each other. He might as well have a little fun while he’s out an about. Maybe he’ll get lucky and one of the former agents on his list will be there instead of just the pilot and the monkey again.

There’s someone moving behind the display case filled with butterfly specimens. This is too easy, it is like they aren’t trying at all.

When he rounds the corner, guns aimed at whoever was there.

It certainly was not who he was expecting.

The olive skinned girl couldn’t be more than ten or eleven. She looked up at him, terrified. Her deep brown eyes wide and lower lip shaking. Her wavy hair was pulled back in a pony tail. Around her neck was a small silver dolphin pendant with a bit of what looked like opal. 

He’d bought one just like it for his-

Reaper heard something in his brain snap.

The mission has failed. It is over. All that matters is getting her out of here, getting her someplace safe. He knows it doesn’t make sense, but he can’t risk it. He can’t not get her out of there. 

In an inhumanly fast move, he’s able to sweep her into his arms and Shadow Step out of the museum and into the park behind it. For the first time in a long time, he tried to be gentle. Once he’s solid, he set her back down on her feet. That dolphin pendant of hers glitters silver an blue in the sun.

He should say something. He might not get another chance.

A chance for what, exactly?

He comes up with:

“Go on. Get someplace safe.”

The girl doesn’t need to be told twice. She nods and bolts. Good.

It is only after she is gone that he realizes his hands are shaking, armor making an unnerving rattling sound. 

 

.................................................................................................

Somehow, Reaper made it back to the ship. 

He made it back to the Talon base.

By some miracle, he’d managed to hold himself together until he reached the hallway where his quarters was. Upon spying his door, he could feel his body’s cohesiveness start to crumble.

He just had to make it a little further....just to the door.

He had not had this much trouble keeping himself together since surviving Switzerland, since being buried alive in wreckage, flesh simultaneously burned and torn away. Air was getting harder and harder to process, his lungs kept coming apart in swirls of smoke under his clothes. His brain was plagued by long buried memories that rose to the surface unbidden. 

It probably wasn’t her.

It couldn’t be her.

Why would it be her?

She lived in Santa Rosa now, near family. They moved up North after Switzerland. Switzerland and fire and closed spaces...and...

No.

She wouldn’t be here. There’s no way they were the same person.

Couldn’t be. It was half a world away. Several continents away.

What did she even look like now?

What did it matter?

It wasn’t like he was ever going to see her. It wasn’t like she’d remember him.

Just like that video he’d watched over and over, memories and images from before were getting blurrier and further away. 

That necklace was one of millions. So he bought it for his daughter, so what? So did a hundred other fathers that day! There were thousands of those kitschy things in the world. Every store at the Delphin Parque aquarium had them! How many millions of girls had that necklace? That same silver dolphin with with cheap imitation opal. 

How long had he even been gone for?

When was the last time he’d even seen her?

He’d managed to make it into to his room, barely hearing Sombra yelling down the hallway at him. His ears were too filled with an intense humming that wouldn’t stop. He slammed the door shut behind him. His legs were giving out, dissolving into angry clouds of smoke and buzzing nanites.

With the last of his physical strength, he forced himself into the corner and let large portions of his body fall into waves of smoke. Pain, Flashes of memories, things he’ll never get, things he’ll never have-can’t have....not now...now ever. Reaper’s front collapses and he’s a mess of negative emotions. He’s despair and rage and a thousand other feelings that leave his mind reeling. Unfortunately, he doesn’t have time to process all of them before being interrupted. 

 

There was a sharp knock at the door. 

“Gabe! You in there? You alright?” 

Sombra. Of course.

“Go away!” he growled....but it was very unlikely that she even heard him, there was hardly anything left for him to vocalize with.

He couldn’t keep Sombra out if he wanted to. Familiar glowing purple lines appeared on the lock mechanism and the door slid open. The hacker stepped in, frowning. The display dropped when she saw what state Reaper was in.  
“Shit, Gabe! What happened out there?”

She closed the door behind her and took a few steps toward him.

The smoke churned around him, violently thrashing out before retracting back into his core. He managed to get his throat together long enough to issue a warning.

“Don’t touch me! Don’t come near me! I’ll kill you like this!”

It wasn’t a threat, it was a warning. 

Sombra held her hands up.

“Okay, whoah, see me not coming closer? See me sitting down over here?”

Sombra eased herself down to the floor where she sat cross legged and waited for the clouds of dark smoke to calm themselves and settle back into their usual form. She didn’t need to be told to be patient. She’d seen the withered, consumed husks that Reaper left in his wake on missions. The hacker had no desire to share their fate. Bit by bit, the violent thrashing of the clouds of smoke ceased and Reaper became more defined and solid. His breathing was ragged and raspy at first, before it evened out. Through immense control, Reaper was able to reign himself in and slowly pull himself back together.

Shit, she’d never seen him so shaken up.

“You....you okay there, Amigo? I mean, you look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

The man didn’t say anything, he just kept himself pressed into the corner, leaning the back of his head against the wall.

“Maybe I did.”

“You...you wanna talk about it?”

“No.”

“Of course not.”

Sombra paused before pointedly reaching into her coat and pulling out a disk emblazoned with a stylized purple skull.

“Hey. I fixed that thing you wanted, that ancient video of Delfin Parque. I was trying to tell you earlier, but...I guess you were still thinking about your ghost.”

Sombra offered it to him from where she sat.

“It took a lot of work to restore. That vid was so corrupted from time and copying, but hey, what are friends for, right?”

That caught Reaper’s attention.

He slowly reached out and took it from her.

“Thank You.” 

Well, that was something she’d never heard before. Both the words and the earnest sounding sentiment. Sombra couldn’t believe it. Genuine gratitude? For that ten second clip? It was nothing....and...and yet she got the impression that it was everything. Good to know for future reference.

...............................................

It was a sunny Southern California day. A younger Gabriel Reyes held a small in his arms. She was a toddler, smiling brightly, clapping chubby hands and pointing at a dolphin in a touch pool. Gabriel hands the child a small, dead fish. 

“Give her the fish, little girl. Give her a snack.”

The child tosses it to the dolphin who takes it, waves with its tail, then splashes them before zipping off the screen.

“Ahhhhh! Papa!”

The child squealed with delight and pointed at where the dolphin had been as her father kissed the top of her head and the video stopped there.

 

...........................................

**Author's Note:**

> I just had this little idea for a one shot in my head while I was working on the next part of Moonlighting. I will neither confirm nor deny that the girl at the museum is actually Gabriel's daughter, that is meant to be open to interpretation. In any case-enjoy!


End file.
